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Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faces crisis on two fronts
today as his ruling party votes on a motion to unseat him and the
truce with the Palestinians deteriorates into open warfare.

Israeli missiles continued to strike against the militant
stronghold of Khan Younis in Gaza yesterday in what Israel's
defence force is calling "Operation First Rain", a bid to use heavy
firepower to crush Palestinian militants. A Gaza leader of the
militant group Islamic Jihad became the latest casualty of two
weeks of escalating bloodletting that has injured six Israeli
civilians and killed least 16 Palestinian militants and
civilians.

Israeli aircraft attacked at least five targets across the Gaza
Strip yesterday. One woman was injured by shrapnel in a strike in
the north of the territory.

The army said the raids targeted buildings used for making or
storing weapons by Hamas, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It said 50 Hamas and Islamic
Jihad militants were arrested in the West Bank.

Israeli air strikes against the main Palestinian factions
continued yesterday hours after the largest militant group, Hamas,
said it would stop firing missiles from the Gaza Strip.

Hamas' most senior leader, Mahmoud al-Zahar, announced the
group's decision to halt attacks shortly after Israel killed an
Islamic Jihad leader in an air strike in a resumption of its policy
of targeting militants for assassination.

In years past it would have been unheard of for Hamas to
announce so explicitly that it was suspending attacks, especially
in the face of an Israeli military offensive. Even truce
declarations by the group typically contain stridently defiant
language and references to the continuation of the armed
struggle.

But Hamas has been working hard to position itself as a
political force in Gaza and intends to take part in elections in
January despite Israel's angry objections..

Despite the "period of calm" agreed by both sides in February,
violence flared on Friday after Hamas and Islamic Jihad resumed
firing missiles from Gaza at Israeli communities.

Islamic Jihad said it was responding to the killing of three of
its members by Israeli troops in the West Bank earlier that day.
Hamas said it was avenging the deaths of 16 people in an explosion
at a Hamas parade in Gaza, blamed on Israel, but which both Israel
and the Palestinian Authority say was caused by careless handling
of weapons.

The violence continued as votes were being cast and counted in a
crucial ballot of the 3000-strong Likud Party central committee in
which extremists, angered by Mr Sharon's evacuation of Gaza, are
seeking to bring forward a vote to reselect the party leader.

Whether or not Mr Sharon's pragmatist faction wins the vote, the
result is likely to precipitate a major change in Israeli
politics.

A victory for Mr Sharon would be likely to reduce the influence
over Israel's dominant party of hardline factions led by the
ultra-nationalist settler movement and ambitious former prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But Israeli observers believe a defeated Mr Sharon would seek to
engineer a snap election and fight it at the head of a new centrist
party that polls suggest would become the new dominant force in
Israel's parliament.

Yesterday's voting followed a day-long meeting of the Likud
central committee which, most commentators agree, plumbed new
depths of viciousness, heckling and mud-slinging.

Yesterday's liberal daily Haaretz carried a headline "The air
crackles with hatred as Likud seems to implode", while in Maariv
Ben Caspit said the Likud meeting was "one of the most embarrassing
evenings in the annals of Israeli democracy, one of the most
shameful exhibitions in the history of any Israeli party".